Digital Past

The distribution of information and music combine many of the topics we have already talked about in class.  “Information wants be shared” and  “medium defines the message”. The fact that the internet was first created as a way to strictly share information amongst scholars, much like a digital encyclopedia only enhances that theory. Over the years the distribution of music has changed in many ways.

Music has not only gone through the evolution of sounds and genre but also the way it is presented to the consumers. Just in my lifetime, I have witnessed at least three transformations: 1. Cassettes –> 2. CD –> 3. MP3 files.  I am going to focus on the MP3 files and how they have changed. When the MP3 files first came into the realm of distribution, we would burn a CD onto our computers and then we would download them onto our MP3 players. Once Youtube became more mainstream, we could download songs from Youtube. This began the process of “stealing” music from artists because no one actually had to end up paying for the music. Whit’s book addresses this by stating that the music industry has never fully recovered from the new forms of music distribution.